The Potter and the Clay (All God's Stones)

MEN AND WOMEN JUST DON'T THINK THE SAME!

In 1992, John Gray wrote a book titled Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Catchy title, but the notion that there is a vast difference between men and women is so true!

My husband and I have been married for twenty-two years and there is not a year that has gone by that we have not, on numerous occasions, thought the following:

“What is he on about?”
“What could she possibly mean by that?”
“What planet does he/she come from?”

And, then, there are some questions my husband really struggles with answering. It is normally when I am waiting for a response from him after asking him what I look like in a certain outfit or whether my new hairstyle suits me?

Even after all these years I can see him pondering:

“Do I tell her the truth?”
“Should I just try and be tactful? “
“I know I am a Believer Lord, but surely in this case it’s okay to lie???”

Men and women are SO DIFFERENT but if you keep your sense of humor intact, recognize from the first day of marriage that there are times you are just not going to understand how your spouse feels and will often find yourself dumbfounded at their reactions to certain events, you will have the makings of an amazing marriage.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the one thing missing from most pre-marriage counseling courses is that the couple are not forced to take a class on “How to Communicate Effectively” before they walk down the aisle. This could be a vital component in the counseling sessions!

Communication in a marriage is a key ingredient and it is one of the things most of us struggle with the most.

The dictionary defines “communicate” as: to impart (knowledge) or exchange (thoughts, feelings, or ideas) by speech, writing and gestures.

Be honest ladies, when last did your husband exchange and impart his feelings to you through speech and writing? Generally, your husband assumes you know how he feels about you.

Now, that is where one of the major problems of communication lies. Women often ‘assume’ things but when it comes to a man’s feelings for a woman, most woman want that verbally communicated and the bonus would be to have it in writing as well!

My husband and I had been married for three years when he discovered just how important ‘communication’ in a marriage is.

I love receiving presents and I really don’t care what it is, as long as it is wrapped up. It could be a small bar of chocolate but as long as I can unwrap it, I will be content.

My husband, unfortunately, did not know this about me when, on my birthday, he handed me an unwrapped birthday present. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe he would do something like that. I ‘assumed’ he would know how much I love the act of unwrapping something. Birthdays are not a big deal to my husband so he hadn’t even thought twice about it.

These are the thoughts that went through my mind as I stared aghast at my unwrapped birthday present:

How can he give me an unwrapped birthday present?
He couldn’t even take the time to look for wrapping paper and sticky tape.
He doesn’t love me anymore.
He is so lazy (nothing could be further from the truth!) and just could not be bothered.
This is just so terrible, I feel like crying (actually I did cry).
Surely he must know how I would feel and how devastated I would be?
How could he be so unfeeling?

And to top it all off, he hadn't even bought me a birthday card!

When I finally came out of the bathroom after crying my eyes out and had stopped sulking long enough to tell him how I felt, he looked like someone had punched him in the solar plexus. His face took on this amazed expression and he said in wonderment “You mean to tell me that you got all that, felt all that, just from me not wrapping up a present? Wow!” I don’t think it was meant as a compliment!

As far as the lack of birthday card was concerned he explained that all the birthday cards he had looked at had been really expensive and he thought he would rather put that money towards my birthday present. That is something I agree with totally . . . except that he did not ‘communicate’ that to me at the time. He just assumed I would know that was the reason I was not getting a card.

You can save yourself a lot of stress and misunderstandings in your marriage if you learn to communicate with each other and listen to each other instead of just assuming things about your spouse!

We had been married for fifteen years when we went horse riding together for the first time. In all those years I had just assumed that my husband knew how to ride a horse. In fact, if you had asked me at any time during that period whether my husband could ride a horse I would have replied yes, without even thinking about it. I had been living with this man for fifteen years and had no idea that he had never ever been on a horse before.

Talk about making assumptions!

Originally posted on Start Marriage Right

Book Video

ALMOST DIVORCED.....

In the seventh year of our marriage my husband and I were contemplating divorce.

We had reached a stage where we were finding it difficult to be civil to each other and all pretense of praying together or caring for each other had fallen by the wayside.

Ours was a marriage that had been prophesied over and prayed into existence. It was a marriage that had been based on God.

We were still going to church on a regular basis and both of us deserved Oscars for our acting abilities. Nobody had any idea how badly our marriage had deteriorated as we were so good at pretending, in front of people, that we were a happily married couple!

The only reason my husband finally agreed to go for counseling was out of fear. Fear that he would only see his daughters on a part time basis. Fear that his children’s lives would be torn apart if we separated.

Our daughters were aged four and two at the time and my blood turns to ice if I think at how close we were to breaking up the family. If we had divorced our third daughter would never have been born.

Have you ever considered how many children are not born because their parents got divorced?

If the marriage had ended in divorce, only one word would have been needed to describe the reason for it. The word: resentment.

I would never have admitted it. To be honest, at that stage of my life, I would not have even realized this was the reason my marriage was failing. I would have found many other guises to explain its failure.

I resented almost everything – the fact Steven had to work such long hours and I was left on my own for a great deal of the time. Steve and his brother were in the beginning stages of starting their own business and there was very little money. And boy, when the children came along, my resentment went through the roof!

I resented the fact Steven could walk out of the door in the morning and have the freedom of doing whatever he liked while I remained at home with the children. The combination of his incredibly long work hours, no family in the area, and not much money contributed to me literally spending all my time by myself with two young children at home. On the weekends when he was home, Steven was so tired he spent most of the time sleeping. I resented that I had agreed to give up my job to stay at home with the children. It felt like my life had been reduced to cleaning the house, ironing the clothes, cooking the food, and being on call twenty-four hours a day.

I was only living to be at the beck and call of everyone else. I had no time to myself and life had become very boring and frustrating. There seemed to be no point to anything anymore; my future seemed very bleak. I felt I had lost all sense of my own identity. The loving, caring, sexy woman my husband had sworn “to love and to cherish’ had turned into a bitter, angry, selfish, and overweight shrew!

Proverbs 19:13 certainly applied to me: “A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping”.

I was so wrapped up in myself I failed to see that Steven had lost all his freedom and his own identity as well.

He went from a bachelor who answered only to himself to being a man with a mortgage, wife, two children and a dog he had to support.

He still had the mind set of being single, but knew the sole responsibility for our welfare rested firmly on his shoulders.

I had lost sight of the fact that I was a child of God and needed to act like one. I had forgotten the maxim found in 1 Thessalonian 5:16

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

I had stopped giving thanks to God for a husband who worked so hard, healthy, beautiful children and a lovely home.

We went for counselling and discovered there that divorce was not an option for us.

All we needed was someone to intervene in the vicious cycle of ingratitude we had fallen into, someone to remind us that we needed to talk to one another civilly instead of reacting all the time.

More importantly, we had to start listening and paying attention to each other. We had to learn to forgive each other and start praying together again on a daily basis.

Henri Nouwen says that resentment is the opposite of gratitude,

Resentment and gratitude cannot co-exist since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift.”1

We had lost sight of the fact that the marriage God had given us was an amazing gift.

We had to kneel in prayer and trust God. We asked God not to simply restore our marriage, but to make it a happy one! He has honored this prayer – a cry from our hearts – so faithfully.

The following question was once asked of me: “When or where have you recognized Christ?”
My answer: “In my husband’s forgiveness of me and my forgiveness of him.”

We have now been married for 22 years and I can honestly say being married is wonderful!

1. Nouwen, Henri J.M. Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World.

Originally posted on Start Marriage Right:    RESENTMENT ERODES MARRIAGES

BOOK VIDEO

THE SEEDS WE PLANT

We need to be mindful of the seeds we plant in our childrens lives.

Mary J. Blige, an international recording artist, once said that when she looks in the mirror, she sometimes sees the damaged soul of her past because of the seeds planted in her head during her childhood.

Simply saying we love our children is not enough; we need to demonstrate our love in practical ways. As flowers need water and sunshine to grow, our children need individualized attention and a caring touch to enable growth to their fullest potential.

I carry significant guilt about a particular sunflower seed incident. Actually, make that two sunflower seeds. When our two oldest daughters were in preschool, they came home one day with sunflower seeds wrapped in cotton wool. They told us they had taken responsibility for the seeds’ eventual growth into thriving plants.

For the most part, they remembered to water the seeds and talk to them daily. I remember walking into the kitchen and finding our oldest daughter engaged in conversation with the seeds at the windowsill where we had put the pieces of cotton wool.

There was a real sense of excitement when the first little green sprouts appeared. Eventually, each sunflower was strong enough to be planted in our garden, so my husband Steven dutifully dug two holes into which we placed the sunflower plants. He erected a small wire fence around each planted area to protect them from being trampled.

What we did not take into account was our dog Jake’s toilet habits. The little plants were growing beautifully until Jake started to lift his leg to dispense his own brand of “watering.” We witnessed what was happening and moved the perimeter of the fence a bit farther away from the plants.

Jake took this as a challenge and became more determined to sprinkle them. It was as if he were in competition with himself to see how far his reach could extend! The acid in his urine ultimately killed our budding sunflowers.

As parents, we should have put a much stronger barrier around our sunflower plants to protect them. Similarly, we need to establish the same boundaries with our children. We need to surround them with a solid physical, emotional, and spiritual fortress of protection during their youth. We need to envelop them with our continual prayers and share how God has blessed us and is at work in our lives.

Furthermore, Solly Ozrovech writes: “If we pray the blessing of the Lord for our children, it must be because we have experienced it as a reality in our lives.”

We must commit to reading the Bible to our children since the Bible declares: “The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). We must purpose to plant His seed in their hearts when they are young and have fertile soil in their hearts. It is only as they become older that this soil becomes tainted and polluted.

As stated in God’s Word, “But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop” (Luke 8:15).

We can strive to instill a good self-image and feelings of worth in our children, along with the assurance that they are loved. However, children are born with their own minds; as they mature, they experience a freedom of choice about which road they desire to travel.

Bearing this in mind—and because of my own parental insecurities—I find comfort in the words a minister once spoke:

“If your children behave badly and make wrong life choices, take heart. Adam and Eve had the perfect father in God and just look at how they rebelled!”

Extract from  God's Promise for Families

BOOK VIDEO

GROWING OUT OF HYPOCRISY

Seven years ago I made a decision, and since then, there has been major spiritual growth in my life (also physical growth judging by the fact that I no longer fit into certain clothes in my cupboard!).

On the 8th December 1991 I was baptized. 1 Peter 3:21 says:  "In baptism we show that we have been saved from death and doom by the resurrection of Christ; not because our bodies are washed clean by the water, but because by being baptized we are turning to God and asking Him to cleanse our hearts from sin".

My mother had telephoned me to ask if she could attend my baptism service.  She wanted to be there to share the experience with me.  I told her very politely not to bother as I was fine on my own.  She did not  pursue it any further, but I knew I had hurt her and I had done so intentionally. I was still trying to get back at her for the hurts from my childhood.

There was so much anger and un-forgiveness in my heart that my baptism was more an act of self-righteousness and hypocrisy than "dying to sin and living for righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24).

Sixteen years after my baptism I was still struggling with a sense of hypocrisy and I was tired of being lukewarm about my faith.  I was tired of confessing one thing with my mouth but doubting God's Word in my heart; tired of worrying and constantly questioning myself and my faith.
I needed to decide whether or not I was going to do what Psalm 37 instructs:

"Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.  Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will do this:  He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun"

In the book of Matthew, the Lord declares:  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled ... Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God"

I longed to have a right relationship with God, a deeper more intimate relationship, a living and growing relationship.
I wanted to see Him in every aspect of my life, so I made the choice to believe Him and committed these words from Romans 3:23-24, to my memory and heart;

"All have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious ideal; yet now God declares us 'not guilty' of offending Him if we trust in Jesus Christ, who in His kindness freely takes away our sins".

I made a conscious decision to remember Psalm 37:23-24, which reads:

The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with His hand"

Every morning when I wake I put my hand into the Father's hand and ask Him to uphold me for the day.

"May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer"  Psalm 19:14 

Extract from "God's Promise for Families"

BOOK VIDEO

WHY DOESN'T GOD HEAR MY PRAYER?

How many times have we asked the following question and heard other people ask the same question: “Why doesn't God hear my prayer? Why doesn’t He answer me?” Some of our prayer requests may be quite selfish but the majority of our prayer requests are genuine and in line with God’s word. In John 14 Jesus Himself says the following:

“I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it”

He expands on this in John 16 and says:

“Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete”

God desires for us to live lives free of sickness. Free of addictions – drugs, alcohol, eating disorders. He wants us to live our lives free of fear, worry or anxiety. We know He wants this for us because in Jeremiah 29:11 it clearly states:

“I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.

God created the human race to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever. Sin, however, messed up the plans God had for us in a very big way.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you” Isaiah 59

The way we get back into right standing with God is through prayer. Through communion with God and through reading His holy Word. Oswald Chambers has this to say about prayer:

“We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. To say that ‘prayer changes things’ is not as close to the truth as saying “prayer changes me and then I change things”. God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature”.

For me prayer is the means through which we get to know God in a deeper sense. I want to share an extract from a letter with you. It is an example of what prayer is and of what real communion with God is. The letter was written by a Methodist minister, Andre le Roux. The letter is dated the 26th May 2010 and he wrote it after he was given the news that despite the chemotherapy treatment he had been undergoing, the cancer in his body was continuing to spread and grow and that he only had a matter of months to live. This is what he wrote:

“Now, more than ever, we are left with a miracle as the only option for healing. We hold onto that hope, though will need to find, and own, a new hope too – one that is not dependent on the cancer being taken away, but on being carried through this disease, and if necessary through the valley of the shadow of death. It is not about what God can do for us, but about who God is to us. And the God I believe in is not the magic genie god who jumps out of our “prayer lamps” to grant us our 3 wishes (though at times God does that for us). I believe in a God who is with us in all things: carrying, guiding and challenging. However, at this time, that picture needs strengthening and deepening in me – it needs a new depth that I have not needed before. I am determined to find it. God cannot be the “fix it” only God – that would make a mockery of everything that Jesus stood for. In the end, the incarnation is about God being with us. I hope to find that in a way that sustains me along this road. Never having been there before makes it a new journey for me – one that may prove lonely at times, no doubt frustrating and confusing at others, but there will also be the special moments that come from seeing the world through new eyes opened by the discoveries I make along the way.”

He ends the letter “Still held in Healing love”, Andre.

Andre died on 13th July 2010, 48 days after penning this letter.

THANKSGIVING FOR UNANSWERED PRAYER!

One of the worst times in my life was when I felt that God had let me down by not answering one of my prayers. From as far back as I can remember I had always wanted to be a writer and I finally completed my first book when I was 43 years old. I believed the promise God made to us in Psalm 37 “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him and He will do this”.

One of the main desires of my heart is to write and to share with others what a mighty God we serve.

Someone had prophesied over my life that God would give me the desire of my heart and the verse given to me in confirmation of this prophesy is found in Jeremiah 30:2 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you’”.

I had covered all the bases – I had prayed about the book, someone had confirmed it with a prophesy which was then followed up by a scripture verse and the book itself is very scripturally based. In fact a friend of mine who read the manuscript before I submitted it for publication had this to say “Actually, Noel, it would be a very good book if only it didn’t have so many scripture verses in it!”

I truly believed and had absolute faith that the book would be accepted for publication. I posted it off to three publishers – two of them never bothered to reply and the third one sent me a politely worded rejection letter. To say I was devastated is an understatement.

I was totally shattered and my faith and trust in God’s faithfulness was shaken. I had believed so strongly that this book would be accepted for publication and my faith had been unwavering! I spent days crying and weeks asking God why my book had been rejected.

After a period of time I started working on the manuscript again. I rewrote quite a few things and added some other things. I also spent a lot of time in prayer and reading the Bible.

Six years later I submitted the book to a partner publisher in America and they accepted it for publication.

I know now that if my book had been accepted first time round it would have been one of the worst things that could have happened to me and my family. I would have taken all the credit and become insufferably proud. I would not have been able to cope with the public speaking that goes hand in hand with having to promote a book. There was still a lot more healing that had to take place in my life and issues from my past that needed to be dealt with before my story was made public. I needed those years to grow in Him, to learn to rely solely on Him and to trust Him in all things. I needed that time to realize that God’s timing is always perfect and that He will not allow anything to happen to us – whether good or bad – until the time is right and He has equipped us to deal with the situation.

I thank God with every fiber of my being that He did not answer that prayer of mine at that time.

John 7:18 says: “He who speaks on his own does so to gain honour for himself, but he who works for the honour of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him”

If God had answered my original prayer and the book had been published when I first submitted it - I would have spoken in my own strength and failed miserably.

In Ezekiel 36 it states “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you”

I needed those years of unanswered prayer to recognize and acknowledge God’s spirit in me and to grow into the new heart that God had given me.

The minister and writer Theodore Cuyler said “I do not believe there is such a thing in the history of God’s eternal kingdom as a right prayer, offered in the right spirit, that remains forever unanswered.”

It took six years for my prayer to be answered and what a blessing that it did take so long.